Vi Presento Toni Erdmann

I watched this movie due to its high mark (especially by the meta-score)and in the last seconds I asked myself: so what ? Like we never saw solitude, loneliness movies ever...The acting is OK, but the subject is stretched over limits, and at a certain time I stopped to watch and went for a cigarette ! My understanding about this movie is about two societies with their characteristics (the German and the Roumanian) both mixed in a capitalistic globalization, I won't say without mercy but without care for real people. Perhaps the last or one of the last sentences of the father was that we work all time to accomplish some targets (typically German !) and don't pay attention to details along our life and then is too late....As a Romanian born young person, the atmosphere of Bucarest is very well depicted as well people surrounding the personages. But one shouldn't wonder, as these days the Romanian cinema is among the highest in its achievements, for example Mungiu's recent film "Bacalaureat" (aka Graduation)stands much above the present one. Sorry folks, but I wasn't left with a great impression.

We all know how a typical family drama runs. A broken relationship falls into some situation that forced the characters to face the issue, the tension grows to the breaking point, they get to learn something, and in the end it resolved them into a new found love and bond (in case of a comedy) or leaves them totally disillusioned and break away from each other (in case of a tragedy). Americans have championed this genre and set the rules we all know, whether we love it or hate it. But here comes a strange rule breaker from Germany, and it beats them all because it stays, despite of all its absurd and quirky situations, totally realistic at its core.

The most prominent emotion through out the film is awkwardness. And no, it's not just because the father doing all sorts of crazy things in his alter-ego, Toni Erdmann. The awkwardness and absurdity dominate everywhere, whether it is a family gathering in Germany or a business meeting in Bucharest. It's essentially because people are all disconnected. It's not that they hate each other or have any ill intentions, but everybody's too afraid to offend anybody, tries too hard to keep the nice facade and fails to share what really matters - even between father and daughter.

The ingenuity of the film is how it treats these awkward moments. Most other films, especially when they brand themselves as a comedy, would try to release the tension with a punch line, a big laugh moment before moving onto the next. In Toni Erdmann, we're not given such easy short cut. We are forced to live through these awkward moments stretching out almost to real time and still not given the luxury of releasing the tension. It might be frustrating for some, but one must admit that is much more akin to real life. Who hasn't experienced a discord with family, partner, friends or colleagues, which keeps you sleepless all night and run into awkward reunion with the person stretching into the following morning? There's no such a thing as an easy solution and relief. Where the father and daughter give a little recital is a high moment of mockery to expectations for such. The choice of song is 'The Greatest Love of All', that is riddled with all the unicorn coloured words like 'children', 'love' and 'dignity' that are 'easy to achieve'. The fact that both father and daughter easily pick it up even on a whim shows that the song represents their shared memory from the past. But despite of that and the optimistic song performed decently by Sandra Huller (considering it's a Whitney song, that is), which would have made the climax in any old American family drama, fails to create that magic moment of 'I love you, dad', 'I love you too, princess'.

But it's not all in vain. Because the father dares to break into his daughter's life, and because the daughter decides, however reluctantly, to go along with it, she learns that he really cares and he her life is much more than the gleaming shopping malls and black business suits. So when it finally comes to the moment, after time after time just seeing the other walking away from a distance in the course of this long awkward journey, when the daughter catches him up and falls into his arms, that short and still awkward hug between the naked daughter and the father in a giant furry costume, strikes your heart so much harder.

When they reunite at the grandma's funeral, nothing much is changed. The social gathering is as shallow as ever, and the father and daughter cut out still an awkward picture together. 'Toni Erdmann' is stubbornly refuses to give us an easy (thus unrealistic) satisfaction to the very last second of its looong journey. Yet, having joined their journey, we can tell they won't now at least blindly complain, 'Oh, he (she) knows nothing!'. And when the time comes when the daughter remembers her father in the future, it would be those few days she lived with Toni Erdmann that she is going to relive time after time.

Initially I didn't know what to make of this movie and while billed as a comedy, there really isn't much that I found laugh out load funny about it until the last third of the movie. There are lots of awkward moments, that some could find funny, but others will not like them.

Most will find this very depressing and will turn it off after the first 60 minutes or so, I nearly did, but thankfully I kept watching and really enjoyed the last third of the movie.

As a father I can speak from experience when I say fathers will do anything to make their children happy and this shows through in this movie. I felt the father's whole misguided aim was to connect with his daughter and try to cheer her up. He can see she is very unhappy with her life. He fails most of the time, but continues to try throughout the movie with sometimes interesting and funny results.

Overall I found this quite a deep, thoughtful and very German movie. Watch lots of German movies and you will know what I mean.

I would be very hesitant to watch it twice.

But it is hard going. Ultimately I'm glad I stayed with it but it tests your patience to the limit at times. It's not a 1 rating like some reviewers are saying. But it's certainly not a 10 either. It's far too long to enable it to get anywhere that kind of rating. There seems to be so many meaningless scenes that could have been trimmed. There are certain moments that for me were laugh out loud. Ines played by Sandra Huller is fantastic. It's made me want to see more of her work. Talk of an Hollywood remake on here. I can only assume it will be a very very different film. There is no way ever a scene for scene remake would make it out of Hollywood. Give the original a go first, it's different!!

This is a great movie - but most likely not for everyone. It's about academic upper middle-class people and their family relationships. Not everybody will find that interesting and there is no usual "romantic" plot development. It's a family portrait of a father and her daughter and as such has no (plot) conclusion. It is not the usual light comedy since it touches very serious questions and the prevailing mood is unhappiness (it is however _very_ funny at times ;-)).

That being said, this movie makes some very fine and subtle observations, presents them in a funny and entertaining form yet at the same time in a thought-provoking and philosophical way which will make you think about it for a long time. If you're from an academic (german) household you will find lots of similarities in your own family relations.

This movie is not fast-paced - in fact it often has long shots of lonely people and a lot is not said but has to be filled in by the viewer. So if you don't relate to the characters this movie will feel longish for sure. But if you find traces of your own life or that of your friends and relatives you'll be amazed by the subtlety and finesse in which this movie is directed. Although there are some bizarre events, everything which happens in this movie could happen in real life. There are no implausible scenes in this movie! This is an incredible statement given the crazy and bizarre things which happen in this movie. If you wanna know how that could be true, you might wanna watch it.